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The Challenge of Equitable Technology Adoption in Education

In 1728, the Boston Gazette ran an advertisement for "Caleb Philipps, Teacher of the new method of Short Hand", where Mr. Philipps offered through weekly mailed lessons- what we could call the first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). By 1840, the introduction of uniform postage rates allowed Sir Isaac Pitman to teach a course where he would mail learning content on postcards and receive transcriptions from his students. We could call this the first online bootcamp. 

For 250 years, technology-enabled and public policy breakthroughs to bring high-quality, accessible, and affordable education for the majority have been right around the corner. While significant progress has been made, particularly in literacy rates across the world, we still seemed far from a global leap forward. That all may have changed during the pandemic. 

At the onset of Covid-19, the broad adoption of technology in education happened almost overnight. McKinsey found that between the start of the pandemic and late 2021, U.S. educators reported a 49% increase in learning technologies that enable collaboration and connectivity. The pandemic forced a rapid uptake in technology adoption across nearly every facet of the education function (from virtual classrooms, asynchronous learning, or blended models) and across every socio-economic demographic and age range (from K-12 to adult learning models, and within every income bracket). 

Today, we must reflect on what we learned during this period of time, and what technological approaches to education will ultimately have a sustained, positive impact for both learners and teachers.

Equity, Affordability, and Accessibility in Education

Perhaps the most pressing question in education throughout the years has been how to bring high quality and affordable education accessible to anyone, anytime, regardless of geography, wealth, and past merit. This may sound an impossible task, yet the world has achieved this outcome before. 

While only 12% of the world population could read and write by 1820, today the literacy rate stands at 86%. Just in the last 65 years the world doubled the literacy rate, from 45% to 86%. These results imply that improving educational learning outcomes for everyone is not only possible, but achievable within a generation. 

Yet numeracy rates, measured as the percentage of adults skilled at problem-solving in math, arguably as important as literacy, stands at just 12%. Tertiary education enrollment (college, associate, and trade school degrees) stands at 40%, while tertiary education attainment, a better predictor of career success, is much lower.

Inequality—defined as a lack of opportunity for the majority—is the biggest problem of our time, and the strength of inequality rests almost exclusively on a lack of educational equity. Lack of high-quality, affordable, and accessible education is the largest barrier to accessing good jobs and financial independence, accessing adequate healthcare, participating in civic discourse, and even developing an ability to care for the environment. We believe that technology is the bridge by which we can improve education and quality of life for all.